The present invention relates to satellites having a payload and designed to be stabilized on station about three axes on a geostationary orbit, such a satellite comprising a structure having walls that face North and South when the satellite is on station and carrying a storage battery of large capacity.
On most satellites, it is necessary to provide one or more storage batteries making it possible to provide useful power as required by the payload and by the units for stabilizing the satellite whenever its normal power generators are inoperative, as occurs, for example, whenever the satellite passes into the shadow of the earth.
Such storage cells, which are heavy components, are at present mounted on the structure of the satellite in several different ways. Such mountings must take constraints into account. In particular, storage cells provide satisfactory operation only over a determined range of temperatures. To satisfy this necessity, storage cells have already been connected to thermal radiators and equipped with electrical heater means controlled by regulation circuits.
Various practical dispositions have been used. One common solution consists in splitting up the storage cells into two batteries, each having two independent blocks on the inside face of the same wall (North or South) and having radiators that are carried by said wall. One of the two blocks is placed in the proximity of the East face of the structure while the other is in the proximity of its West face.
That disposition presents drawbacks. Since each block is independent, it must be connected to the other block of the same battery by conductors which are carried by the structure of the satellite, such that the two blocks cannot be connected together until they have been mounted on the satellite. Installation and removal of the batteries requires other elements of the satellite to be removed such as its solar generator, which makes the operation complex and risky, particularly prior to installation on a launcher. The surface area of the radiator and the power of the thermal control means must be sufficient to keep each block beneath its upper limit temperature when the radiator is in the sun and above its lower limit temperature when the radiator is in the shade. This means that the radiators must be given a large area (thereby taking up space on the North and South walls which are required to carry other dissipative elements), and to provide electrical heating at high power. Since the batteries are concentrated against the North and South walls, they occupy a large area reducing the area that remains available for other dissipative electronic equipments, such as travelling wave tubes for a telecommunication satellite.